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This book made available by the Internet Archive.
Dedication
To Sasha, my loyal friend, and all her fellow creatures.
Acknowledgements
I want to sincerely thank everyone who supported me in the process of getting this
book into your hands.
Special thanks are due to a few folks I will mention here.
I want to acknowledge J.P. Van Hulle and Aaron Christeaan for their invaluable
assistance in channeling important parts of this book.
I am fortunate in having editorial support from Lonnie McAllister who also assisted me
in formatting and preparing the book for printing.
I am thankful to Lenore Schuh for her sense of humor and for her many creative
illustrations; Nina Bookbinder for her wonderful cover design; Janet Reed for
proofreading.
I am grateful to my wife Lena who gave much helpful advice and supported me in the
making of this book.
Acknowledgements are due to the books Messages from Michael and More Messages
from Michael by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (Berkeley Books, 1983 and 1986) for
introducing the Michael material.
Finally, I wish to thank Michael for his free and unconditional generosity in providing
this system of knowledge to whoever is interested.
A Brief Overview
The goal of this body of knowledge is to promote unconditional acceptance of self and
others. Of course should you find this a challenge, mild tolerance will suffice to start
with.
This knowledge is being re-introduced, as it has been historically during times of great
change, to help with the current planetary shift toward the mature soul stage. The
people of Earth have been dominated for thousands of years by young soul lessons and
play. They have amassed power, wealth, influence, and learned the lessons of
competition and personal glory. Now, the majority are ready to grow to a new level of
perception. The new mature level of perception focuses on the value of relationships
and growth through self understanding.
Accelerated growth is greatly assisted by an understanding of each step in the
evolutionary process on the earth and especially a fuller knowledge of the true nature of
relationships. Here then is a book about those relationships and each individual's part
in the grand scheme.
Although this teaching is not associated with any known philosophy, psychology, or
religion, readers will recognize elements of many systems of thought, both Eastern and
Western. Perhaps the most recognizable are the works of Gurdjieff and his students,
Ouspensky and Rodney Collin, pioneers who began disseminating this knowledge
earlier in this century.
More recently, this system of knowledge has been channeled by a variety of competent
students who are dedicated to the twin values of self-understanding and unconditional
acceptance of others.
Michael, the non-physical source of this information, gives it freely and unconditionally
to anyone who is interested. Michael is simply a convenient name for an experienced
entity who once lived many lifetimes upon the earth. Michael completed the lessons
and games of the physical plane and now compassionately teaches from experience.
Chapter 11 Body and Energy 209
Breath-Diet-Sex-Stress-Stress reduction-Aura-Chakras-Cording-Decording Chapter 12
Balancing Yin and Yang 239
Male and female energy-Male and female lifetimes-Planetary energy-Male and female
cycles-Frequency Chapter 13 Manifesting 251
The nature of prosperity-Using higher octaves
PART SIX INTEGRATION 283
Chapter 14 Putting It All Together 285
Appendix A Review of the Basic Teaching 303
Appendix B Walk-ins 315
Glossary 321
Overleaf Chart 330
IV
page
Preface
The source of the material in this book is Michael as well as the psyches of the various
channels who worked together to access this body of knowledge. A channel is a person
who is able to access wisdom from a non-physical source and deliver it accurately
through speech, automatic writing, or other technique.
Nevertheless, any channeled information is subject to distortion by the personality of
the channel, the time of day, weather factors, and a great number of other variables. By
using more than one channel I was able to cross-check and keep the information
consistent throughout. Since most channeled information is a one man or woman
operation this is not usually possible. Michael is unique in that he is glad to come
through a great variety of talented channels. This keeps the teaching fresh, consistent,
and non-exclusive.
Michael has always insisted that you validate all channeled information for yourself.
This is the only way to truly learn and grow. Therefore do not believe anything you read
here. Simply check it out for yourself.
One of my tasks as the author was to organize, edit, and transcribe a vast number of
tapes and notes; years' worth of channeled material. My other principal task was to
channel information to fill the gaps in the material and create bridges between parts
that were isolated from one another. Therefore I wrote much of this book in a light
trance state.
The book is divided into six parts so that you can readily find major subject areas. If
you wish you can read the book from cover to cover, or you can use it as a reference,
looking up areas of interest as you will.
vn
Introduction
This book builds upon the foundation set down in The Michael Handbook (formerly
Essence and Personality). That book detailed the fascinating relationship between
essence and personality and described at length all the facets that make up personality,
lifetime after lifetime. It covered soul age development and described the current and
coming global transformation in terms of essence development planet-wide.
Here in this book you will forge ahead into the world of relationships, an exciting
journey revealing the inner processes and reincarnational meaning of your connections
with friends, lovers, and enemies. Here you will discover the workings of karma and
maya, the foundation stones of the earth game.
You will gain insight into the deeper meaning of relationships and you will learn about
the types of alliances that bring you joy and suffering on your evolutionary path. You
will learn about monads, essence twins, cadres, quadrants, septants, families, sex,
communication, imprinting, and the power of your position within groups of different
size.
Here you will gain the tools to understand the larger context of your relationships and
discover how to be more accepting of them or effective at completing them.
Then read on to learn about the tools for personal as well as spiritual growth. Discover
how your relationship to the planet itself can accelerate your evolution and bring more
satisfaction into your daily life.
Read these pages and enjoy the expansive view that gives you a whole new
understanding of all your relationships.
For those of you who may wish to refresh your memory or become acquainted with the
Michael system for the first time, I have included a brief review of the basic teachings in
Appendix A. Reading this section will help tremendously in understanding the concepts
upon which this book is based.
PART ONE
Getting Down to Earth
Chapter One Arrival
The Tao (or God) thinking aloud.
I am pure light, speeding toward my chosen goal physical reality and earth life. As I
travel, I explode into thousands of fragments and "I" becomes "We." We gradually feel
ourselves slowing down to accomodate physical form. Now we have arrived and we're
ready to play.
Will we like it here on this watery planet called earth? Well after all we created it!
Nevertheless we'll spend some time finding out whether we want to evolve here or
pursue another line of experience. After being perfectly whole and "One" for so long,
we're looking for diversity, uniqueness, and individuality. Yet we must begin with a
global experience and gradually move toward separateness in order to get used to it.
Let's see. Where do we start? That's it. We'll combine with the planet itself, experience
its myriad forms, and re-create as we go. We'll travel through the mineral, plant and
animal kingdoms and get to know them by living out a variety of their lives. We'll
TaotoEarth
prepare long and well for our first human lives. As we begin those infant lives, we'll
pretend to be separate and alone. Gradually we'll learn from one another what we
forgot. That we're all one. Our relationships will enable us. The law of karma will teach
us. Our challenges will focus us. Love will remind us. Let's play.
ARRIVAL
What is the order of this gradual preparation for human form? How do you set up each
individual lifetime? What are the key relationships that enable you to progress in your
evolution toward self understanding? Here we will reveal to you that order so that you
may know the vastness of the life you have chosen. We will reveal the way you play with
the other fragments that you arrived here with. In this book you will find the
relationships and configurations that underlie the incredible play of consciousness.
Have fun and learn what you already once knew and are about to remember.
YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE PLANET
You have seen how you sprang from the Tao as sparks of light to become fragments of
an entity or family of consciousness. As a fragment you have taken multiple human
lives progressing in the difficult and fast-learning school of earth through the infant to
old soul stages in order to contribute to your entity's overall experience.
Let's return to the time before you became human. Who and what were you before you
took the human form? How did you prepare for your human lives? In this section you
will learn in more detail how you chose to leave the womb of the Tao to develop your
relationship with the physical plane.
You arrive on the earth not yet as infant souls ready for human life but as pure abstract
energy wishing to experience the very foundations of the planet itself. You choose to
experience
Arrival
mountain and sea, cloud and river, plant and insect, fish and mammal, on the road to
human life.
In spirit form you use these primary experiences to make choices about whether you
wish to continue toward sentience and if so, what path you will pursue. At any juncture
you may choose to opt for a different line of creativity, a different developmental arena
of experience that does not necessarily lead to human form. Yet all of you in human
form have chosen this option because of your personal interest and curiosity about the
experience of intelligent, binocular bipeds, that you inhabit and live through. How's
that for a detached look at yourselves?
Exactly what is your developmental course like and what is the structure of it? Exactly
how do you prepare for that first infant soul life?
Not surprisingly, inorganic and organic matter on earth is divided into seven kingdoms
of ascending order of diversity and complexity. As primordial units of consciousness
and energy you begin to live through each of these kingdoms according to a specific
order. Here is an outline that shows you the progressive steps from your birth as a
fragment to your first infant soul lifetime.
ESSENCE BIRTH
1. You leave the Tao as a vast mass of intense energy, one fragment among 100,000 or
more, with the intention to experience all of life. The Tao gives you birth through a
great outpouring of love. The love becomes light, light becomes energy, and energy
becomes matter.
2. As an intense ball of energy you explore the universe, sightseeing, visiting and
experimenting with the various options for play and learning. You are looking for the
best opportunity for you to explore separateness and uniqueness. You want to explore
this separateness so fully that it eventually leads you back to unity with the Tao once
again.
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; Arrival
3. There are many planets and dimensions to explore. You contemplate many others
before you choose Earth for its special qualities that you now know so well.
ESSENCE DEVELOPMENT ON EARTH
FIRST LEVEL: You approach this planet sensing it and its energy only energetically;
you have only the broadest sense of what it is. You are sensing the planet as a whole,
not as its parts. This is the point to which you will return afterward having experienced
every single detail that is possible on the planet from all perspectives.
•You waft gently with the wind in spirit form, a timeless zephyr, caressing the grasses,
the rock faces, and the peoples, as you gradually become more familiar with the planet.
You, with your family of fragments, your entity, begin to take a hand in creatively
molding the face of the planet, changing its surface features gradually according to a
larger overall plan. You have become a deva, a spirit who is caretaker of some segment
of the physical plane.
•After centuries some entities have chosen to move on to another planet, not finding
their exact needs met here. You decide however to proceed, to move closer to this
planet. Gradually you pursue even greater separateness and individuality. You become
an ocean with boundaries that wash the shores of continents. You experience a
relationship with the moon and feel the tides that move you ever so lightly. You
experience many living forms within you, and you, with thousands of other entities,
have a hand in shaping those forms and the landmasses that contain you.
•Some entities withdraw...this planet is not for them. They seek a different path. You
choose to continue, intermingling your energy with a mountain range where you
experience the profound
Too to Forth
solidity of rock mass. Now you are even more defined, more separate. You have become
a deva of the mineral kingdom.
•You pursue more and more individuality, specializing in specific minerals and strata of
earth at definite locations on the planet. You experience the molten interior as well as
the cooling of surface gemstones and metals. Again, as before, you help to shape and
create new forms as you experience them for eons. Later in human form you will find
affinity for those locations that you experienced in your essence form.
SECOND LEVEL: You move on to the plant kingdom after thoroughly experiencing the
mineral kingdom. You become a deva that attends the grasses and simple plant forms
that have a mass character such as moss. Gradually you specialize into specific
individual plants of greater complexity such as a fruit tree. You assist in their evolution,
helping to develop new strains and hybrids. You favor your experiences with some
kinds of plants while moving away from types that you cannot relate to as well. Later as
a human you will sense an affinity with some plants and may subconsciouly know their
unique characteristics and uses because you have been them.
THIRD LEVEL: You evolve to attend to more complex lifeforms now and begin with the
simple bacterias, microbes, and amoebas. Gradually you move on to the more complex
crustaceans and insect forms such as bees, finding in these an opportunity for rapid
acceleration of creative adaptation.
FOURTH LEVEL: Following the insect kingdom you proceed in Devic form to coexist
with fish and reptiles of the land and water. Here, as in the insect kingdom, you develop
the rudiments of the instinctive center that you will use as a human for basic survival.
As a helping spirit you attend to these animals but do not interfere with their natural
lifestyles. You may however assist them with their evolution through mutation.
Arrival
Recall that at any juncture in Devic development you may decide to leave the planet in
favor of other planetary experiences.
FIFTH LEVEL: When you have spent as much time as you wished with the reptiles and
fish, you move along to the birds and mammals who represent a quantum leap in your
evolutionary movement toward individuality. You begin to attend to simple, warm
blooded, less intelligent mammal forms such as antelopes, hippos, and mice. You
accompany birds who derive most of their identity from the flocks they belong to. As an
animal Deva you assist and accompany the animal through seven reincarnational
cycles. Here in the fifth level you begin to develop the moving center that you will use as
a human being. Here also, in the latter part of the fifth level, you begin to accompany
and assist a single animal rather than the entire herd.
SIXTH LEVEL: After completing the fifth level you proceed to highly intelligent
animals such as tigers, wolves, boars, and horses. Eventually you will seek
companionship with men because you are preparing for your first infant soul life as a
human being. You may be the Deva of a faithful dog or cat living in the company of
humans for many years.
Here at the sixth level you also attend in Devic form to the highly intelligent, more
independent birds of prey.
Sixth level experiences begin to develop inspiration and the emotional center that will
be evolved in the human cycle.
SEVENTH LEVEL: Here you experience the lives of higher primates, river dolphins and
the like who, although highly intelligent have not yet made the leap to sentience. Here
you are tool and symbol users who enjoy experimentation and risk-taking. You may
fraternize with men in hopes of becoming familiar with the abilities and possibilities of
humanness. At the seventh level you begin to develop intellectual powers that you will
need for your first infant soul life.
•You are ready for your first infant soul lifetime. Once you begin this evolutionary cycle
you are committed to completion. You no longer have the option of moving on to
another planet. The reason for this is that, as a human, you form karma immediately
and this requires balancing. You are off on your exciting series of lifetimes from infant
through the old soul cycle.
YOUR COMPANIONS ALONG THE WAY
The first thing to remember is that you do not travel alone. You are one fragment in an
entity of over a thousand fragments, all experiencing life just like you. You are also a
member of a larger family called a cadre consisting of seven entities. You tend to know
the fragments in this cadre intimately throughout your lifetimes. You also have an
essence twin and task companions that assist you in your evolution.
The second thing to remember is that you have specific relationships to experience and
work out before you can cycle off.
You must experience being both the parent and the child of the same person over
several lifetimes. Likewise you must be someone's teacher as well as their student, a
leader and a follower, a jailer and a prisoner, and so on.
You have special groupings that help you to accomplish tasks and meet your goals.
Triads, quadrants, sextants, and so on, all create an opportunity for essence growth
each lifetime.
You have agreements to keep and special sources of support to help you keep those
agreements that you make. Why do you make agreements? Because you want to play
the game and you want to learn, and those are the ground rules.
THE UNDERLYING PROCESS
The next thing to remember is that you have special processes that assist you to play
out your relationships. These processes that are presented in detail later in this book,
help you to create
and then resolve your karmic ribbons. They are the universal forces of three and seven.
The triad or force of three governs the nature of all human experiences. All events have
a positive component, a negative component, and a neutral component that represents
resolution. Each position tends to automatically bring about another position into play.
So the play of life continues on and on until you are ready to cycle off. All the overleaves
that make up your personality are made up of these triads.
As you shall see shortly the triad is the basic force that supports the law of karma.
The septant is the other universal process that governs all developmental growth. All
growth is composed of seven steps leading to the next octave, just as in musical notes,
the final step being the first step of the next set of seven.
That is why this teaching is a system of sevens.
THE BASIC RULE
Now let's look at the basic rule that makes the earth game work. This rule is of course
the law of karma already mentioned. The law of karma dictates that every imbalance
that you create must be redressed so that balance is once again restored. If you take a
life then you owe a life. If you steal money then you must pay back the money you took.
If you do not redress the imbalance in this life then it must be done in the next one or
the next.
This law of karma follows the triadic law. First you create karma or imbalance with
yourself or another. Secondly you redress the imbalance. Third you experience
neutrality about the issue. Then you are ready for a new karma and so it goes.
Why have such a law?
Simply speaking, karma allows the earth game to work. It ensures that you will stick
around to learn and find your way back to the Tao. You learn by doing. You learn what
the consequences of your actions are. This is how all small children learn and is the
basis for all learning on the physical plane. When you have
completed all karma and your balance sheet is even, you are an old soul ready to cycle
off the physical plane.
PLANNING AND LIVING A LIFETIME
You know the players, you know the process, and you know the basic rule. Now you are
ready to begin a lifetime in your long journey back home. How do you do it?
First you choose the set of overleaves that you want to work with in your next life. You
choose these overleaves because they will help you create conditions and experiences
that you will grow from. Secondly you choose the proper culture and the family set-up
that will allow you to fulfill your life plan. This plan includes your life goal, your life
task, your agreements, and the karma you wish to create, experience, and resolve.
Next you choose the proper moment of birth that will give you the exact astrological
configuration you will need to have your unique personality and a general life pattern.
After your birth you begin to maneuver yourself and those around you so that you can
obtain just the right imprinting or conditioning that you wish to experience.
You have embarked on your life and in the process of a complete life you experience the
seven internal monads that lead to completion at death.
THE SEVEN INTERNAL MONADS OR RITES OF PASSAGE
These are the seven major rites of passage that constitute a complete lifetime. In order
for you to evolve from one level to the next you must have experienced all seven rites of
passage. Therefore if you die young and fail to complete all of them, you return for a
complete lifetime before transiting to the next level. You may already have already
completed the seven monads however, and return briefly as an infant to complete an
unfinished lesson.
The seven internal monads are:
1. Birth.
2. The experience of developing autonomy at age two.
3. Puberty-adolescence.
4. The mid-thirties, or age thirty-five, when essence can
manifest.
5. Retirement or early sixties when you feel that your life
task has been mostly accomplished.
6. The realization that death is imminent.
7. Death itself.
Each of these steps is an intense rite of passage that marks a major transition from one
state of awareness to another. Each monad is a time of great energy as well as a time of
vulnerability. Events surrounding the transition can have a major influence on the
outcome. For example the trauma surrounding birth or the lack thereof can have
lifelong repercussions. It is important to remember that these variables are chosen to
produce specific results.
The monads usually have a quality of tension to them and can be experienced by you
and those close to you as times of great difficulty. They can nevertheless be experienced
joyfully on occasion. A good example of this is death, the seventh monad.
1. Birth.
Essence uses the gestation period as an opportunity to get used to the new body you
will inhabit. There is no standard pattern to this process. Sometimes essence occupies
the developing body
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from conception onward. In other situations essence does not actually enter the new
body until the moment of birth. Mostly esssence gets used to the new body by degrees
and focuses into the body more at birth. The birth of course marks the beginning of life
outside the protection of mother's body.
2. Autonomy: approximately age two.
The second internal monad is not transited in a few minutes or hours as is the birth
monad. It may take place over a period of days, weeks, or even months. The monad is
complete when the child fully recognizes himself as functioning independently of
mother. Generally this monad occurs between two and two and one half years of age.
3. Puberty-adolescence.
As with autonomy, the onset of puberty is not an overnight event but is a gradual
process marked by massive hormonal releases. The discharge of hormones signals the
onset of adult sexual activity and thrusts you into a time of intense karma. The physical
changes in your body facilitate the forming of karmic ribbons and their resolution.
Valuable lessons in the art of living can be the result. This is the time when all chief
negative features are sampled and one is finally chosen. The monad is over when the
hormonal activity has achieved homeostasis and you have identified yourself as having
left childhood behind.
4. Essence manifestation (approximately age thirty-five).
The fourth monad occurs much later in life and is usually complete by age forty. Age
thirty-five is the most probable year for older souls to manifest their soul age. When
this monad is accomplished you look and act like your true soul age as opposed to
manifesting your imprinting or conditioning. In order for this to be accomplished you
must drop enough parental and cultural conditioning so that your true overleaves can
manifest. Until you
do this your overleaves are overshadowed by those of your parents, relatives, and so on.
This personal housekeeping can be facilitated by counseling or intensive work on the
self under the guidance of a teacher. Sometimes the work can be assisted by an abrupt
life change such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness that gets you to reconsider who
you are.
The more personal growth work you have done prior to the shift, the less traumatic is
the actual monad. Like many of these life passages, the fourth internal monad can take
weeks or months to negotiate.
Not everyone successfully accomplishes this monad and some delay it for many years
so that a person might be in their sixties before they truly manifest if at all.
5. The realization that your life task is mostly accomplished.
There is no set year when this fifth internal monad is normally completed: however it
usually occurs after age fifty-six. To accomplish this monad you must review your life's
work, what you consider to be your successes and failures, and make peace with
yourself. You evaluate the relative success you have had in completing your life task
and you develop a strategy for the rest of your life. That is, you decide for yourself what
you have left to do, and you decide how you are going to do it. In addition, you begin to
shift into a state of being rather than the intense doing state that you have used most of
your adult life. For many people who have been driven to accomplish all their lives, this
can be a difficult task. In general the older the soul, the easier this transition is to make.
6. The realization that death is imminent
You begin this monad the moment you know for sure that you are about to die. During
this monad you must come to terms with your death and how to handle whatever fear
you have about it. Now this can take place only a few seconds, minutes, hours, or days
before your death, or on the other hand up to a year before
the event. Sometimes you select lingering, disabling illnesses such as AIDs, that give
you plenty of time to accomplish this. In other lives you pass through this monad
rapidly, for example after you have been mortally wounded in an accident or on the
battlefield. In some lives you die so suddenly that you have no experience of this monad
at all.
7. Death itself.
The seventh internal monad is like the first (birth) in reverse. It is the actual transition
from physical reality to the astral plane and the life review that accompanies this shift.
Your essence leaves the body either by degrees or all at once depending on the
circumstances of your death. Your experience of the moment of death is reflective of
the life you have led. If you have confronted your fears in life and have gained a
measure of detachment about death, the transition can be ecstatic. If your fears have
run you and you have resisted death, the event can be terrifying.
In general older souls have an easier time with death than the younger souls for two
reasons. First they tend to be more detached about such matters. Secondly they are old
hands at death, having lived many lives before, and they know what to expect.
When you have accomplished all seven internal monads in one lifetime or in several,
you are ready to go on to the next level within your soul age.
During each life you attempt to complete your internal monads as well as those with
others. You attempt to fulfill your agreements, seek to accomplish your life task, and
without fail, you take some important experience back to your entity.
Eventually you custom-design your death to facilitate as much karma as possible.
As mentioned, following your death and transition processes, you evaluate your just
completed life in terms of lessons learned
and opportunities passed by. You begin to plan the next lifetime in light of what you
have not yet mastered or completed.
THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Your major tools each lifetime are your physical and energetic bodies, the vehicles
through which all life is experienced. Through trial, error, and experience you gradually
learn to use these bodies to full advantage each lifetime. You learn to handle stress, to
care for the balance and health of both bodies, and to refine the powerful energetic
properties of each. You learn how to harness the powers of the physical body to fulfill
essence goals.
You gradually learn how to use the tools of the planet as well. Eventually you learn to
use your relationship to the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms to assist you in your
spiritual awakening.
You learn the major processes that encourage essence growth such as meditation,
concentration, study, and conservation of energy. You learn to recognize and receive
help from teachers both physical and non-physical. You learn how to communicate
from an essence level rather than solely from false personality. And finally you learn
how to stay awake enough to recognize the illusion of maya that threatens to send you
back to sleep.
In the following chapters we go into much detail about everything that has been
introduced in these opening pages. We would say that a complete understanding of the
basic rule of karma is essential to your evolution and growth. Therefore we will begin
with a thorough discussion of karma and self-karma before moving on to other
sections. You will find that topics are grouped into parts that reflect common themes.
Nevertheless the material can be organized many ways because it is all interrelated.
Chapter Two Karma: The Rule of the Game
What is Karma? Where does it come from? What is its purpose? How do you create it
and how do you resolve it? When you know the answers to these questions you gain an
advantage in learning to handle karma. The more you know about karma, the greater
your ability to complete it and reduce its control over your life.
In your culture you frequently confuse karma with fate or the notion that the future is
written indelibly in ink. You may even believe that you are a victim of karma and that
no matter what you do you can not escape its tentacles. Most of you have had lives
where you despaired and gave up all hope because you felt that karma would inevitably
deal you a terrible blow. You might even think that karma is a punishment for misdeeds
meted out from a cosmic parent that harshly judges and disciplines you.
Another error you can fall into is the belief that karma is good or bad. You might
subscribe to the notion that good karma is like good luck while bad karma is bad luck.
These beliefs, while
hinting at the truth, are misleading and confusing at best. In this chapter we will help
you to clear up the confusion surrounding karma. First we will discuss the law of karma
as it relates to your involvement with others. In the next section we will look at the selfkarma that involves your own personal issues only.
Karma is the universal law of consequences. Any experience of a certain basic intensity
will record and generate the necessity for a balance of that intensity. Let us go into to
this a bit more specifically. Intensity is the medium through which thoughts, deeds, and
emotional experiences are recorded in the Akashic records. The Akashic records are a
complete record of all events and experiences that occur on every plane of existence.
Remember that the Tao created the game of life to experience as much of itself as it is
able. The law of karma is what makes this possible.
Let us look at it this way. Any thought, action, or emotional event is like a pebble
thrown onto the calm surface of a -pond. The pebble creates ripples that have
consequences as they spread out on the pond's surface and interact with floating
objects and the shoreline. The greater the size of the pebble and the stronger the
intensity with which it is thrown, the greater the size of the ripples. This of course
creates an experience for the pond, so to speak , and this is what the Tao is looking for,
experiences. Throwing the pebble in the pond ensures that there will be consequences
leading to more consequences and so on. The game of life then is in process.
The Akashic Records, the Tao's memory bank, keeps track of events according to
certain blocks or ribbons of experience. Think of it this way. With each event an
imbalance is recorded in an open file on the imbalance column. The imbalance
generates an impetus for immediate or eventual balance of the sheet. When the event
has been experienced in reverse the balance column is checked and the file is then
considered closed. This is the law of
karma, sometimes called the law of debt. The Akashic records are kept perfectly and no
file is ever lost or forgotten.
Let us look at some examples of the law of debt regarding emotional experiences.
If a thief steals a person's life's savings, that person will probably feel intense emotions
as a consequence. The thief will also probably have intense feelings during and after the
course of the theft — perhaps excitement, fear, guilt and so on. These intense emotional
experiences are recorded and generate the necessity for both the thief and the victim to
experience the opposite emotion. So the victim will then become the thief who steals
the former thief's savings. If John shoots Mary in one life, karma is recorded. An
imbalance remains on the books waiting for another lifetime when comparable
circumstances exist for repayment. Mary will then cause John's death and the balance
sheet is complete.
You may ask at this point, "Is that the only way karma can be repaid, a tooth for a tooth
and an eye for an eye?" The answer of course is no, not necessarily. If John shoots Mary
when he is a baby soul and does not meet up with her again until they are both old
souls, Mary is not likely to repay the Karma by wanting to shoot Tom. A number of
alternatives exist for them. John could save Mary's life and lose his own life in the
process and the debt would be satisfied. On the other hand Mary might inadvertently
kill John in a traffic accident and again the debt would be repaid.
The creation of karma has everything to do with choice. You choose all your karmic
lessons no matter how disagreeable you might feel they are. However, whether you
judge karma good or bad has to do with your impact on other people's choices. When
you interfere with the free choices of others you create what looks like negative karma.
When you promote and create the opportunity for greater choices for others you create
what appears to be positive karma.
Karma however is neither good nor bad. It is your judgement which makes it appear
positive or negative. You may generate what you may call positive karma by donating a
large sum of money to a needy individual. In another incident you may generate what
you call negative karma by stealing a large some of money from your neighbor. Both are
important lessons in living that ultimately lead toward greater human understanding
and love. The one judged negative simply is the longer path.
Remember that karma is necessary in order to play the game of the physical universe.
Karma makes it possible for lessons to be learned and development to take place.
KARMA CREATION AND SOUL AGES
Infant souls and baby souls are on the lookout for intense situations and experiences to
create because their essence knows that this is the only way to learn their lessons.
The infant, baby and young soul stages are karma-ridden. Karma is predominantly
"sown" in these stages. Theft, assault, murder—those things which are intensely painful
—are especially experienced in these earlier cycles. These experiences ensure younger
souls that they will have ongoing developmental lessons and a wide variety of situations
to interact with other people. This is akin to the young child's experiments with
breaking things and torturing insects to find out about them.
In the mature and old soul cycles the theme switches to karma repayment. Karma is
generated in these older cycles but it lacks the primitiveness of karma of the younger
cycles. Older souls often avoid potentially karmic situations because they recognize
them as being lessons they have already learned.
Whereas a younger soul might relish the opportunity to participate in the intensity of
battle, the older soul might seek conscientious objector status instead. The younger
soul of course cannot understand why anyone would want to avoid
battle (especially for a cause) and might accuse the older soul of cowardice. The older
soul is simply desiring to avoid the creation of more karma. This is not to say however
that old souls do not participate in wars because they do. But they will try to find
positions where they can avoid creating new karma. The people they might kill will be
old karmic debts. These agreements of course are carefully orchestrated. The right
person will be in the right place at the right time.
During the earlier cycles, when you are a younger soul, you usually do not have a clue
that you are creating karma or repaying it. You have not yet learned about the law of
karma and are busy finding out, just as a child finds out about a hot stove by playing
near it.
When you are an older soul on the other hand, you begin to be conscious of creating
karma and you are often aware of your karmic debts. This greatly enhances your ability
to weather karmic situations and to balance the karmic records.
The sixth level of any soul level is devoted to repaying the bulk of the karma that has
been incurred throughout all the earlier levels of that stage. So a sixth level baby soul
will attempt to complete most of the karma sown in earlier levels. This is what makes
the sixth level so busy and such an intense experience. Therefore, it may take a number
of lifetimes to complete. It would not be uncommon for a sixth level old soul to have
five to ten lifetimes at the sixth level.
Sixth and seventh level old souls create little or no karma with others because they are
finishing up their cycle and will not be returning to repay the karma.
KARMA AND THE LIFE CYCLE
The early years of your life tend to be the most karma-filled. Adolescence is often the
most intense time of all in a life. The hormonal and developmental changes tend to
accentuate the difficulties of that period and facilitate a climate wherein much karma
can be played out. This is also the time when you
experiment with the different chief negative features: self-destruction, greed, selfdeprecation, arrogance, martyrdom, impatience, and stubbornness. Generally by about
the age of 21 you select one of them to settle down with. After the age of 30, karmic
intensity is greatly reduced. There are exceptions to this, as is the case with those
people experiencing lifetimes at the sixth level of any stage (heavy karma balancing),
and those with a goal of growth.
HOW KARMA REPAYMENT WORKS
Karma is supervised and organized by essence. Often the personality knows nothing of
the purpose and impending unfoldment of the karma. There is good reason for this.
False personality often operates out of fear. If your conscious personality knew that an
intensely painful karma were about to occur with someone, it would run as fast as
possible in the opposite direction, thus avoiding the repayment or the lesson that
essence had in mind. Your personality usually feels like a victim in karmic situations.
Essence planned the karma repayment without flinching. Even when you are an old
soul you need this benevolent amnesia to meet your more difficult karma.
As mentioned earlier, karma usually comes with no warning even though it is essence
directed. It frequently comes like a freight train rounding the bend and coming down
the tracks with inexorable speed. The train is upon you before you can run away. When
you are in the midst of a karmic situation you feel foggy and unclear, and you may feel
strangely unable to get out of the situation. You often wonder how this happened to you
all of a sudden.
You may walk innocently into a meeting and within minutes are insulted and
humiliated by the new director on your job. You are instantly plunged into painful
emotions and wonder what you did to deserve it. The answer is often
that you didn't do anything this lifetime to deserve it. You simply showed up to balance
the record sheet.
Likewise you may be penniless and lost in a foriegn country and a complete stranger
suddenly appears on the scene and takes you in, cares for you and gives you an airplane
ticket home.
When karma has been completed a feeling of freedom and relief ensues. The fog clears
and you gain insight into the preceding events. You become neutral about the issue that
had so recently carried such intensity for you. You don't care anymore. You may even
wonder how you could have been so upset about the issue. The purpose of karma
completion is to get you neutral on the issue so that you can move on to new and more
interesting lessons. You have reached the neutral position on the triadic experience and
you are ready for something new.
Remember again that karma is not fate. Fate is a notion of predestination. You choose
karma specifically with the purpose of undergoing an emotional or learning experience.
Think of karma as ribbons that draw together experiences and weave a distinct pattern
that is the product of many lifetimes. Remember also that those ribbons cause you to be
in specific places and to meet certain people, sometimes to your great surprise. If you
have a karmic debt with another individual living in a foreign country you will suddenly
find yourself drawn, sometimes almost magically, to travel to that other country where
the debt can be repaid. Occasionally the obstacles in the path of meeting are too great
and the karma must be deferred to another lifetime.
For example you may decide that this lifetime you will complete ten major karma,
seventy-five medium karma, and one hundred and fifty minor karma. Typically you
tend to bite off more than you can chew, so that if you complete most of these karma
the lifetime will feel sucessful to you no matter how uncomfortable for your personality.
Some karma will be judged
too difficult to complete for now. There is always free choice about when to complete a
karma. The choice to complete it is made by essence at the time of initiation of the
karma. It will always be completed.
Let us say that you have karma with a Mr. Chang who resides in China, and you live in
Brazil. On an essence level you feel an urge to return the good deeds he has done for
you in the past that will take a full year to repay. You however have not been able to
travel to China and are heavily involved in completing and creating karma in your
locality. Mr. Chang is able to visit Brazil for one week and you feel a pull to attend a
lecture he is giving in a nearby city. You go out of your way to see him even though the
topic is not of interest to you. You realize that although you are strongly attracted to
him you will not be able to complete the karma in this life because of his short stay.
Such flirting with karma is a common experience and happens all the time. On the
other hand if Mr. Chang announced that he would be in the vicinity for several years,
the pull to complete the karma would be almost irresistible.
Sexual attraction is one of the greatest facilitators of karma. When an imbalance exists
between two people there is a strong essence-driven impetus to balance the record
sheet. However, personality may sense a possible danger and wish to avoid the
situation. Strong sexual attraction will make this avoidance less likely.
For example if you embezzled a large sum of money from Marsha in an earlier lifetime
and you suddenly run into Marsha in this lifetime you may want to run and hide. You
sense that she has come to collect. However if you are distracted by the fact that
Marsha is now a beautiful blonde, your very type, then your lust will lead you directly
into the karma. How convenient. You may later wonder how you
ever could have gotten involved with her after she has divorced you and taken your
house and car in repayment.
KARMA AND TIME
How long does karma last? Is there a time limit or a way to speed it up? The answer is
not a simple one.
Sometimes karma lasts only for a few seconds, such as a short intense pain; other times
karma can last a whole lifetime, such as having a benevolent aunt who constantly looks
out for you for many years. In another vein a foe can cause you the loss of your arm
early in life, a handicap that can last for decades. The length of the karmic experience is
directly in proportion to the length of the first incident. If you deprive someone of the
use of their legs for twenty years then this becomes a twenty-year karma. If you cut
short someone's life by one year then your own life will be cut short by one year in a
later life. If you raise an orphan with kindness and generosity for twelve years then you
will be repaid with a twelve-year kindness. Balance then, is the name of the game.
However, you can drag karma on, escalate it or creatively manipulate it according to the
experiences and lessons desired by all parties involved. In order for karma to be truly
complete everyone involved must acknowledge the completion of it at an essence level.
Karma can be such a delicious source of growth and lessons that often all parties would
rather refuse to recognize the repayment and generate more karma instead. The karma
builds and becomes more intense lifetime after lifetime until ultimately the lesson of
forgiveness is learned. Sometimes a person will feel an intense tug to repay a karmic
debt that they owe you. You may recoil at their appearance and try to avoid them based
on past painful experience. This is like saying "Oh no! Not you again! I'm getting out of
here!" So the chase is on until the debt is repaid.
However, people are not always successful at repaying the karma.
For example Tom may owe Susan for abandonment one lifetime. When they meet again
the intention is to repay the debt. Nevertheless Tom may get cold feet at the prospect of
being abandoned and instead repeat the original offense by abandoning Susan all over
again. The karma then has just escalated. Small wonder then that some people get
skittish when they see their old enemy show up. The question arises "Am I about to be
repaid or am I about to be burned again?" The game of cat and mouse can go on for
centuries. Again, in the end, all is forgiven, balanced and completed.
Occasionally you play the game of "Who can be the most generous?" lifetime after
lifetime, by building karma of a positive nature with someone.
On the other hand old souls wishing to cycle off the planet become adept at completing
karma efficiently and creatively, sometimes accomplishing several at the same time.
KARMA AND THE SEVEN PLANES
Karma may be played out on various levels of experience. Physical karma, such as the
giving or taking of large sums of money, must be balanced on the physical plane. If, as a
doctor you save a person's life, your own life will be saved in such a fashion. However,
karma is not always a physical act, but rather may be purely emotional. For example
you may be instrumental in making someone feel wonderful emotionally. On the other
hand, you may hurt someone's feelings intensely. Since no completely physical
transaction has occurred, this karma may be repaid in the dream state or on the astral
plane. In fact a great deal of emotional karma is both created and resolved on the astral
plane.
The law of karma or balance operates throughout all the planes of existence. However
the karma of the higher planes is inconceivably different from the karma of the physical
plane.
KARMA AND OVERLEAVES
You incur karma each lifetime through your personality and this is a function of the
poles of the overleaves you choose each lifetime. The karmic experience is incorporated
by your essence at your death, adding to its richness, experience and growth.
You choose specific overleaves to facilitate the payment or development of certain
karma. Ordinal overleaves such as stoicism or caution mode are tilted toward selfkarma, and exalted overleaves such as dominance or passion facilitate karma in the
world.
For example the ordinal chief feature of martyrdom relates to internal suffering and
feeling a victim. Its opposite in the pair, the exalted chief feature of impatience, often
causes you to act out impatiently toward others.
This inward/outward character of the ordinal/exalted overleaves is true for most of the
overleaves.
Often the negative pole of any overleaf facilitates what you judge as negative karma and
the positive pole may be experienced as helping to complete karma or to be karma-free.
For example, in the negative pole of passion mode (identification) you are well set up to
experience suffering in a karmic situation such as a divorce. However on the
completion of that karma you would then slide to self actualization, the positive pole,
and feel expansive and free.
Karma: the Rule of the Game
31
Selected Action Overleaves
KARMA AND RELATIONSHIPS
In upcoming sections we will examine in detail agreements and monads between
individuals. Here we will simply say that a monad is a specific agreed-upon relationship
between two people such as mother-daughter or leader-follower. These relationships
are played out reciprocally and usually involve a great deal of karma. The monad itself
is not the karma. It is the way these monads are played and the choices that are made
that determine the nature of the karma. For example if a mother is cruel to her
daughter, karma is created requiring balance. If the mother is generous and kind with
her daughter karma is again created that is reciprocated. Theoretically it would be
possible to conduct such a monad without the creation of any karma whatsoever.
However this would be pointless since karma carries the lessons and experiences you
are all looking for during development.
HOW TO HANDLE KARMA IN GENERAL
An excellent technique to complete karma is the following. Before going to sleep,
postulate that you want to get more neutral about a specific issue or person. This sets
up the intention to work through the karma and creates positive communication
channels between you and the other person with whom you want resolution. It will also
bring up from the subconscious or instinctive center memory banks the issues to be
resolved. These may be revealed symbolically in dream form or come to your awareness
spontaneously the following day.
Another excellent tool is to do is the obvious. Sit down and talk to the person about the
matter. See if you can both agree to work on the issue as the situation probably isn't
comfortable for either of you. Perhaps you can reach some communicative agreement
and look at the current issues. You will find that often you have deliberately
miscommunicated to keep the karma going.
If the person has died or is otherwise unavailable, you can still communicate with them
in a meditation. You can simply imagine them and communicate to them what you
wished to tell them. With practice you can even hear their responses and carry out a
complete discussion. Your intention knows no boundaries or physical obstacles. Time
and space are not a barrier to your wish for karma or self-karma resolution.
A word of warning is in order here. Work on one issue at a time. You often bite off more
than you can chew and the result is confusion and more karma.
That which you judge to be negative karma usually needs deliberate work to complete,
because of your resistance to it. Positive karma on the other hand tends to work on
itself. You enjoy them and work on them every minute of the day. You want to spend
every minute with the other person. As a result the karma tends to be completed very
quickly.
Similarly you could complete a negative karma if you worked on it night and day and
were around that person constantly.
Because karma is a foundation stone that keeps you progressing, everything in life is
somehow related to it. Therefore each issue we will discuss in this volume will relate to
this central theme of karma.
In this section we have explained how karma works in relation to others. In this next
section we will show how you produce and resolve what we call "self-karma," those life
lessons and experiences for which you alone are responsible.
PART TWO
SETTING UP A LIFETIME
Chapter Three Setting Tasks and Challenges
PART II
This section focuses on those processes that contribute to the makeup of a single
lifetime on earth. YJe continue our discussion on karma focusing instead on "selfkarma/' the lessons you set up for your own learning each lifetime. Here you will
discover how you set up your own personal astrology to determine your overleaves,
your life plan and tasks. You will learn how imprinting affects you and how patterns are
carried from one lifetime to the next. You will see also how you select your family for
the best karmic lessons and for that specialized imprinting you were hoping for. Finally
you will learn the significance of your death each lifetime and discover how you can
make it work for you.
SELF-KARMA (Completing cycles)
What is self-karma and how does it differ from karma with others? How is it created
and how is it resolved or balanced? What is its purpose?
Here we will focus more specifically on karmic experiences that you orchestrate for
purposes of internal balance. Self-karma, then, does not directly involve anyone else to
be experienced and resolved.
For example, you may wish to experience the extreme pinnacle of success followed by
losing everything and plunging into poverty and failure. Within this self-karma, you
experience two extremes. You may wish to experience these extremes within the same
lifetime or experience the opposites in back-to-back lifetimes, one of wealth and
success and the other of poverty and failure. Of course a more interesting twist would
be a life of wealth and failure and another life of poverty and success.
Remember that we defined karma as an experience of emotional intensity. If Judy
makes five thousand dollars in an investment and it means nothing to her, there is no
self-karma. If William makes ten dollars and is exuberant, self-karma is generated.
Much of your life experience is self-karmic by nature because this is where you learn
some of your most valuable lessons.
There are levels upon levels of self-karma. Everything that you judge to be good about
yourself is a self-karma as well as all that you feel is bad. Feelings about personal
success or failure are the most self-karmic experiences. Self-karma then, concerns how
you relate to yourself and how you manage yourself out in the world.
On an essence level you have no bias toward positive or negative self-karma. There is a
tendency however, to use up or
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